No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

‘Why not, not eat pigs together!’

Jews and Muslims hate each other a lot. But both Jews and Muslims have a great deal in common in the way they perceive their respective histories. Judaism developed as a monotheistic religion in the Middle East in the 12th century BCE. Islam originated in the 7th century CE. But Judaism and Islam, the two religions share similar values, guidelines, and principles. Hebrew and Arabic, the languages of Jews and Muslims are both Semitic languages.

The Bible and the Quran are having almost the same stories but the names are changed little bit for the Quran to make it different from the Bible. Adam and Eve of the Bible are Adam and Hawwaa in the Quran. Cain and Abel are Qabil and Habil. Noah is Nuh. Joseph is Yusuf. Moses is Musa. Korah is Qarun. Saul,David and Golith are Talut, Dawud and Galut. Jonah is Yunus. Zachariah and John are Zakariya and Yahya. Mary is Maryam. Jesus is Isa.

Muslims adopted almost all Jews and Christian practices and rituals.Jews and Muslims both perform circumcision,an ancient Egyptian practice. Both wear hats or caps and beards. Both hate women. Both slaughter animals using the same painful method to get halal and kosher meat. And both do not eat pigs. They should try to get some peace on the basis of their common ground.

I like Tim Minchin for writing wonderful songs. His Palestine anthem or the pig song is one of my favourites.

‘We don’t eat pigs,
You don’t eat pigs,
It seems it’s been that way forever

So if you don’t eat pigs,
And we don’t eat pigs,
Why not, not eat pigs together?’

Actually, what became Judaism emerged in the 4th century BCE. Evidence strongly suggests that the early Hebraic religion was henotheist (there are many gods, but we are allowed to worship only one) and became monotheist during the Babylonian Captivity, which stretched from 598 BCE to 520 BCE. Modern Judaism is essentially a different religion from even that; it appeared after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.